Touchstone (39 page)

He never let on that he knew Fairwalk’s fascination with Cade was not merely that of a theater fanatic for a significantly talented player. Neither did he ever hint that there was a much better source of information about their futures available. Many, many futures.

The first stop on the Winterly was the university town of Shollop. Very pretentious, very grand, and very full of students who, after a month in classes after the summer holiday, were more than ready for renewed carousing. There were artists of all sorts, from painters who relied solely on paint and painters who worked with magic, to musicians, sculptors, imagers, poets, and crafters and designers of everything from glassware to jewelry. Added to these were scholars of history and literature, languages and the law. Cayden was, predictably, intimidated. This did not sweeten his temper. By the night of their performance before the Shollop Marching Society (a private show arranged by Fairwalk; the official venue was the Players Hall on the university grounds), Mieka had once again had enough of his tregetour’s sulks.

So instead of breaking a withie or two, he decided—with Rafe’s amused connivance—on a more interesting approach.

The Marching Society’s venue had at one time been a greenhouse where the university’s naturalists and the university’s cooks battled constantly over how much space would be given to the exotic plants brought back for study from distant lands and how much to vegetables. Then an obscenely wealthy nobleman had left his entire fortune to Shollop for “the Health and Comfort of the Kitchens.” Gleefully in possession of a large new winter gardening location, the cooks had abandoned the old greenhouse to the naturalists. These worthies had petitioned the king, saying that this precedence of scholarly bellies over scholarly brains was an outrage. So His Gracious Majesty, who at the time had just begun his fascination with plants and beasts (and, eventually, people) from faraway regions, “encouraged” his nobles to contribute to the cause.

Thus the old greenhouse had been abandoned, and the Marching Society had bought it up for practically nothing, and the only reminders of its previous function were the odd-looking plants in crumbling pots scattered about amid the tables, and a lingering odor of fertilizer.

When Touchstone investigated the venue on the afternoon of their show, Mieka formed the opinion that the place needed a good airing out. Rafe agreed.

So at the end of the riotous “Troll and Trull” they shattered one wall’s top row of glass panes.

The students loved it. The authorities were not as pleased. It was left to Lord Fairwalk to adjudicate the matter—and keep Touchstone out of the local lockup—while Cade, Mieka, Rafe, and Jeska were treated to as many free drinks as they could swallow.

Mieka fell into bed shortly before dawn, quite drunk and entirely delighted with his success, for Cade had lost his diffidence around these young men—his own age, most of them—who knew so much more about so many more things than he did. He’d actually enjoyed himself. Just like old times—if
old
included a few months ago. Not that Mieka had understood five words in twenty of most of the conversations Cade had been drawn into. But it was enough for him that the drinks were free, and excellent, and that Quill had had a good time.

He hadn’t reckoned on the next morning’s hangover.

They were due to depart for Dolven Wold that afternoon. Rafe always woke early by long habit, professing himself incapable of sleeping much past the usual hour when his parents began the day’s baking. He was hoping to get over it. Jeska, now that he no longer had to fit bookkeeping into his days whenever he could, was catching the knack of sleeping in. Since leaving school at the age of fifteen, Mieka never got out of bed until late morning unless physically yanked from the blankets. But even he was up and about before Cade that morning.

The rest of Touchstone had gathered in the empty taproom, waiting for Fairwalk to tell them it was time to pack up and get ready to leave. Rafe was, predictably, writing to Crisiant. They’d been gone only fifteen days and this had to be at least his fifth letter to her. Mieka had every respect in the world for the girl, and liked her as much as she’d let him, but it just wasn’t decent for even a bespoken to have this kind of stranglehold on a man. Jeska was playing a rousing game of slapcards with the innkeeper’s daughters—aged six and nine, giggly around this young man they already recognized as stupendously good-looking. Hells, any female out of nappies saw it. Mieka kept eyeing the bar. His breakfast ale had worn off and he was just about to head back upstairs for the bottle in his satchel when Cayden stumbled into the room.

Bleary-eyed, colossally hung over, snarling on his way to the kitchen—Mieka tried to make himself as small and unobtrusive as possible in his chair. Except for last night, Cade in general had been surly; today he was likely to be insufferable.

“What th’fuck d’ya mean, there’s no breakfast?”

Rafe glanced up from pen and parchment. Jeska missed slapping the table and hit his own thigh instead.

“Closed until
dinner
?”

The kitchen door swung open in time to hear the innkeeper’s condescending reply: “We get up in the
morning
around here, son.”

Cade erupted from the doorway. His pale eyes fixed on Mieka. “Let’s go!”

“Cade—” Rafe began.

“Find Kearney and tell him to order me a bath!”

Mieka traded winces with the fettler and scrambled after Cade out into the bright sunshine and muddy slush of the street. A block later they were outside a dry goods shop. Cade yanked open the door and snapped, “You got money? Go find me some milk.”

“Er … Cade, what d’you want with—?” But the rest of the question stuck in his throat when Cade glared at him.

So he went up the street, peering into each shop window, and finally located a place that sold cheese. His request was met with blank looks, and a lot of time was wasted as he explained he really did want the raw material, not the finished product, but eventually he emerged with milk (he had to pay for the covered jug, too). Cade was pacing outside the dry goods store, a heavy burlap sack in his arms.

Mieka caught him up, careful not to spill the milk. “Cade, what’re you—?”

“Shuddup.”

Back at the inn, they blew past Fairwalk on the stairs. His Lordship mumbled about a hot bath waiting, but there was scarcely time because they really ought to leave, don’t you see. Mieka scrambled up the stairs after Cade to the second floor garderobe’s lovely big bathtub, filled as requested with steaming hot water.

Cade ripped opened the bag, dumped the contents into the tub, and pulled a spoon out of his pocket. The bag slapped to the tiled floor. Mieka saw the label for the first time: ten pounds of Bellytimber’s Best Porridge Oats.

“’Twas the milk what made it Art,” Mieka told Rafe and Jeska and the baffled Lord Fairwalk once they were in the coach. “Anybody else woulda been content with eating a few spoonfuls of plain porridge—even me!—but not Quill! Gods, it was
beautiful
!”

Rafe and Jeska collapsed, howling with laughter. Cade sat with arms folded, cool as a cloud.

His Lordship frowned. “But you don’t mean to say—that is, he didn’t actually—I mean—”

“Oh yes he did!” Mieka crowed.

“You! Stop! Stop at once! Don’t you dare move those horses one step!”

It was the innkeeper, arms waving wildly, covered to the elbows in congealed porridge.

“I thought it would harden faster,” Cade remarked.

Mieka shouted out the open window to the coachman, “Drive!” Then, with a polite, “Do pardon me an instant,” he turned, and as the coach jolted forward unhitched his trousers and presented his naked backside out the window to the infuriated innkeeper.

This time Cade brought out pen and ink without being asked, and personally crossed off the words
Incorrectness of attire
.

“That’s two,” he said, and grinned.

Chapter 19

Mieka knew his luck in finding himself, at so young an age, part of something worth being part of. He knew himself to be not much more than a young man of substantially Elfen blood who was damned good at glisking, drinking, making mischief, and making love, and asked little else from life other than to do at least two of those things—preferably three, and ideally all four—every night. But he was also beginning to realize, mildly intrigued, that Touchstone, and especially Cayden Silversun, had the potential to make him so much more.

After those first acts of rebellion against the King’s little list, he behaved himself. More or less. Not only did he have many more months to accomplish his goal, but he decided he’d best space things out for the times when he got too bored or Cade succumbed again to the sullens.

He had given up trying to persuade Quill into an evening of sampling thorn. For a time he considered slipping something interesting into Cade’s drink, the way he had with Rafe, but refrained. Bearing in mind how perplexed Auntie Brishen had been about the reaction to blockweed, Mieka decided that experiments ought to be cautious, and at Cade’s own request.

Life improved with Cade’s disposition, though there was plenty about the Winterly Circuit to strain everyone’s temper. Still, memory of the porridge-and-milk morning could make Mieka smile even when the coach wheels were mired in mud and they all had to get out and push while Jeska attempted to dry out the road; even when the “beds” they’d been promised turned out to be one blanket and a smelly pillow each on the floor of an inn’s upstairs storage room (swiftly remedied by His Lordship, bless him); even when he wanted to have a girl so desperately that he couldn’t get to sleep without redthorn. By the fourth week of the Winterly, the sexual drought was getting beyond desperation, and even his promise to Blye, and to himself, could no longer keep him from emulating Jeska—who somehow managed to find himself a girl almost every night. Rafe had announced that in his opinion, any girl foolish enough to marry the masquer would have to bring a straw mattress and a stable blanket to the wedded bedchamber if she ever wanted to enjoy her full marital rights:
“Can’t get it up anymore without the smell of hay and horse, can you, lad?”

Being conscientious about sleeping in the same room with Cade seemed sillier every day—especially on those nights when a pretty barmaid winked at him. Rafe seemed not to notice girls at all, possibly because he knew any dalliances would be reported back to Crisiant but probably because he simply wasn’t interested. Mieka thought this bizarre. First of all, as long as a man didn’t bring home a pox, what business was it of his woman’s who he slept with while away from her? But second of all, and much more telling, Crisiant was Crisiant, which pretty much explained everything even if Mieka couldn’t put it all into exact words.

As for Cayden … he was just too intense about the Circuit, and performances, and arriving on time, and the equipment, and … just
everything
. They had Fairwalk to deal with all the arrangements now, so what did he have to anguish himself about? Mieka supposed he’d been at it so long he couldn’t just stop. But although after that riotous night in Shollop he usually joined in the celebrations after a performance, and was merry enough when he did, not one glance of speculation or outright suggestion from a girl ever registered with him. And glances there were, despite his conviction that no woman would look even once at him when Jeska and Mieka were there to be appreciated. Mieka thought this ridiculous, too.

Late on their last afternoon in Dolven Wold, third stop on the Winterly, they went to have a look at the outdoor venue where—with luck, good chavish, and another triumph at Trials—they’d play next summer on the Ducal Circuit, possibly even the Royal. Dolven Wold’s indoor hall was a tricky one, long and rather narrow, with a bounce off the sweeping curves of the staircases at the far end. Chat had warned Mieka about that, and the unholy chill of the place that made firepockets necessary at regular intervals amid the audience. The magic needed for warmth, minimal though it was, could always be felt, and they’d had to make allowances for it. But the outdoor site—ah,
there
was a place where a glisker and a fettler and a masquer could stretch full out. The “seats” were terraced rows cut into the side of a hill; the “stage” was an intricate pattern of flagstones that matched the red walls and towers of the ancient, abandoned castle. Rose Court, the theater was called, and as Jeska and Cade meandered its snowy breadth, Rafe and Mieka climbed all the way to the top tier.

“This will be
spectacular
!” Mieka yelled down into the curving bowl of the theater.

“Everybody else does ‘spectacular’ at Rose Court!” Cade called from the stage, startling Mieka with the just-beside-him quality of the sound. “We’ll be
fantastic
!”

Rafe was hopping back down from snow-step to snow-step, laughing, arms flailing madly, and all at once Mieka had a sort of foreseeing of his own: a string of children, bundled up in winter clothes, jumping along behind their father. Imagination, he knew. But lovely to contemplate. He’d be Mad Uncle Mieka, and they’d all come over for tea and swimming at Wistly Hall—

And then imagination flared like a sunglint off the snow as a trill of laughter sounded behind him. He turned. The girl was small and dainty, her long blond hair braided with blue ribbons. The green of her cloak matched the green of her eyes. She stood just beside a knobbly old pine tree, like a forest Sprite about to welcome him to her home.

“Where’d you come from, darlin’?”

“Mieka!” Cade shouted. “C’mon, let’s get back!”

“You go!” he replied, sauntering towards the girl.

“Mieka!”

“Later!”

The girl smiled at him. It took no special talent for dreaming the futures to know that his weeks-long drought was over.

It turned out that she lived with her sister in rooms above a shop selling household goods. The pair spent their days tending the counter and making or repairing brooms and brushes of all shapes and sizes. He liked the rough feel of their hands.